Video: Working with Nature for Community Recovery on Japan’s Urato Islands

The UNU Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS) International Satoyama Initiative has produced the video “Bouncing Back from Disaster – Working with Nature to Create a Brighter Future for the Urato Islands” to capture a portrait of people engaged in community recovery after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.

Photo: A. Minohara

While challenges to the islands’ communities, such as the aging and waning rural population, have arisen in the last few decades, the disasters of March 2011 have exacerbated the situation at an unprecedented pace.

The video highlights the abundant nature on and around the Urato Islands of Miyagi Prefecture, and shows how the people living and working on the islands maintain these special links with nature.